Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Catholic wife and mother Miki Hill, in a recent email message forwarding the text of a column by Steve Wood damning the mid-term Synod 2014 report as being guilty of causing lasting damage to the Church, compared the current crisis of attacks on the family, even from within the context of the Synod, as being a "9-11" for the Church, like the terrorist attacks which brought America to its knees.

"Dear Some of the Finest Young Men I Know,

"I know these comments from Steve Wood are long and I know that I have nothing to do but read with a broken leg, but I believe this article is worth your time to read.

"By nature, I am an activist and an optimist.

"I believe that the interim report from the Synod nailed the coffin on a real crisis in the Catholic Church. I have some real concerns where all of the feathers of scandal and misrepresentation have landed not only all over the world but specifically on our US soil.

"After Steve Wood read Familiaris Consortio from JPII IN 1990, he came into the Church and was motivated to bring the Truth of Jesus Christ and His liberating Gospel of Love to as many as possible. Maybe some activism will be generated by both those who have the courage of the Civil War soldiers to defend the Truth and those that see the nonsense from comments of some of our Princes in the Catholic Church.

"Please forward this column on to your peers. As the one man said on the plane going down in Pa on 9/11, 'Let's roll!' Much needs to be done now.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

I can’t remember where I came across this riveting Civil War question, “Why didn’t the Civil War soldiers turn in battle when facing canons loaded with canister?” I often wondered how men kept marching forward in the face of near-certain death by having their flesh mercilessly shredded. Surely there was uncommon valor and bravery. Yet, was there another dynamic moving them forward in the face of a hideous death?

Civil War soldiers marched into battle in units composed of men from their hometowns and home states. If a man turned in battle, his cowardice meant that he couldn’t go home as a man. His reputation was on the line. The vast majority of soldiers facing canister preferred to lose their lives rather than lose their manhood.

Many Catholic Church leaders desperately need to learn a critical lesson from Civil War soldiers. Men have a deep divinely-embedded instinct to preserve their masculinity and thus are repulsed by feminized and homosexual-friendly environments.

Leon Podles in his important book, The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, states: “If the feminization of the Church continues, men will continue to seek their spiritual sustenance outside the churches, in false or inadequate religions, with high damaging consequences for the church and society.

The current attempts, within almost all Christian denominations, to normalize homosexuality will, more than anything else, convince heterosexual men that religion had best be kept at a great distance. Catholic churches that cultivate a gay atmosphere (Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach, gay choirs, gay tolerance talks in schools) will keep heterosexual men away. Fear of effeminacy is one of the strongest motivations in men who will sometimes die rather than appear effeminate.”

Millions of Catholic wives wonder why their husbands don’t want to go to Mass with them. Likewise, thousands of bright and beautiful young Catholic women wonder aloud, “Where are the marriageable young Catholic men?” I’m afraid it’s goodbye to many good men because of the effeminate atmosphere of the contemporary Catholic Church. The contemporary homosexualized church atmosphere is the penultimate level of feminization, and it stinks in the nostrils of normal men.

Reporting on the defective interim report of the Family Synod, the secular media was delighted to broadcast worldwide that there is a pro-gay seismic shift in the Catholic Church. While the final report of the Synod backtracked on the morally defective statements on homosexuality and communion for those living in adulterous relationships, make no mistake, the lasting worldwide damage is done. For the man on the street, the Catholic Church is just one more institution caving in to our culture’s gay-friendly transformation.

It’s important to keep in mind that the public perception of the Catholic Church’s pro-gay drift hasn’t just grown out of news reports from the Family Synod. A long train of events and declarations have supported the pro-gay drift of the Catholic Church. I’ll mention just a few of the disastrous statements and actions leading up to the Family Synod’s interim report. > > Despite the denial of a few within the Church, literally the entire world knows that the Catholic clerical crisis was mainly a homosexual crisis. The striking failure of so many bishops “to connect the dots” as they moved homosexual abusers from parish to parish revealed a lot about the moral framework of many leaders.

According to the Pew Research Center, due to “the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and their coverup by the Catholic Church, roughly a quarter (27%) of former Catholics who no longer identify with a religion cited clergy sexual abuse scandals as a reason for leaving the Church. Among former Catholics who now identify as Protestant, 21% say the sexual abuse scandals were a reason for leaving the Catholic Church.”

The big bombshell was the media’s out-of-context reporting of Pope Francis’ statement, “Who am I to judge?” His question is emblazoned on the tee-shirts of homosexual activists. While I fully realize that the context of his answer was deliberately ignored, or misinterpreted, nevertheless, his answer convinced millions of youth and young adults that the Catholic Church is now “ok” with sodomy.

The Catholic press may publish lengthy articles listing the seven reasons why the Pope’s answer was taken out of context (and it was), but young people are not reading these articles! They are just skimming the headlines and reading a few sentences on their smartphones. At colleges and universities, both Catholic and Protestant students are asking, “Why is Pope Francis pro-gay?”

The Church is certainly right to reach out in mercy to homosexuals, couples having children out of wedlock, couples remarried outside the Church after divorce, and couples fornicating. Yet, such a merciful outreach needs to be carefully balanced with truth. Otherwise, the message that’s received is that the Catholic Church is finally ok with the full spectrum of the sexual revolution. Such a distorted message in today’s sex-saturated culture will catapult millions of youth and adults into the claws of the sins of the flesh.

In case anyone in the United States had any lingering doubts about the homosexual-friendly atmosphere in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Dolan dispelled them when he agreed to be the Grand Marshal of the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City. In his announcement he said that he welcomes the inclusion of a homosexual group. This is an out-of-the-closet group of NBC’s homosexual activists marching under a homosexual banner with the cardinal’s blessing.

Never before in the history of this annual parade, which first took place on March 17, 1762, has an in-your-face group of militant homosexuals marched carrying a homosexual banner. Rest assured that next spring Cardinal Dolan’s being ok with the homosexual activist participation in this parade will be broadcast coast to coast in the secular media.
Oh, I almost forgot Cardinal Dolan’s widely reported exclamation of “Bravo” in response to a news story about a professional athlete who came out of the closet. Bravo? What was he thinking? Most men seeing the homosexual NFL player kissing his little boyfriend on ESPN were repulsed.

Then there’s the utterly strange case of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the primary author of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. One would imagine that Cardinal Schönborn of all people would be able to discern a genuine view of human sexuality from a corrupt one.
Cardinal Schönborn complimented two practicing homosexuals in Vienna who allegedly live in what he said is “lifelong fidelity.” The cardinal said things like: “It was wonderful, in a human way as much as in a Christian way, how one was taking care of the other.” He added: “Such things must be recognized.”

Questioned on the Church’s attitude to homosexuals, the cardinal said: “We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships,” while adding: “A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous.”

In April 2012, the election of a young gay man who was living in a registered same-sex partnership to a parish council in Vienna was vetoed by the parish priest. After meeting with the couple, Cardinal Schönborn reinstated him. He later advised in a homily that priests must apply a pastoral approach that is "neither rigorist nor lax" in counselling Catholics who "don't live according to [God's] master plan".

Since 2006, the cardinal has allowed active and unrepentant homosexuals to be “blessed” in his cathedral on St. Valentine’s Day.

The Fatal-to-the-Family Vatican Synod interim report was just one link in a long chain of indicators revealing a growing pro-gay atmosphere in the Catholic Church. While faithful Catholics were understandably troubled by the interim report, not everyone was.

It is instructive to read the comments of retired Anglican Bishop Gene Robinson on the Vatican Family Synod’s interim report published in The Daily Beast. Bishop Gene Robinson earlier in life was married and had two daughters. He divorced his wife. While openly living in a gay relationship he was consecrated as an Episcopal bishop. In 2014 Bishop Robinson announced the end of his “marriage” to partner Mark Andrew.

Bishop Robinson, writing about the Family Synod said: “With respect to homosexual people, there is a decidedly changed tone. No wonder gay and lesbian people feel like it’s a new day! No mention of sin here. No reiteration of official Catholic policy and teaching that homosexual persons are ‘intrinsically disordered.’ And most positive of all, there is mention that our unions may (emphasis added) contribute ‘gifts and qualities’ beneficial to the Body of Christ.”

You can be sure that the active homosexual community was joyful upon hearing the interim summary report from the Family Synod, while many faithful bishops and laity were appalled.
Despite the Family Synod’s backtracking in the final report, we can be sure the damage from the worldwide broadcast of the initial report will be lasting and profound. In the popular mind, the Catholic Church finally caved to the sexual revolution. The Family Synod has given the appearance that the last worldwide moral restraint on sexual sin has given way.

At the fall 1980 Synod of Bishops, Pope John Paul II was asked by the Synod fathers to prepare something to aid the family. The result was, The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World [Familiaris Consortio]. This document was the primary cause for my conversion to Catholicism in 1990.

The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World is faithful to Jesus’ teaching about marriage and divorce, timeless Catholic doctrine, and human sexuality, while being charitable to families and marriages in all situations. If you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so now.

After hearing John Paul II speak on the importance of the family in 1991, I launched the Family Life Center International in 1992. For the past twenty-two years, it has been a joy and privilege to urge families worldwide to heed his advice and counsel on marriage, family life, and human sexuality.

Now with the moral earthquake created by the 2014 Synod of Bishops, I’m forced to warn those same families about mixed signals, defective reports, and dangerous statements regarding homosexuality. In an attempt to deal with the crisis of the family in the modern world, the Cardinal Kasper coalition at the Family Synod has created one.

My heartfelt wish is for the 2014-2015 Family Synod to re-adopt Saint John Paul II’s The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World and formally recognize it as the finest tool to deal with the contemporary crisis in family life. Please, no further action is needed!

My plea to those in Catholic media is, “Please don’t put a happy face on this tragedy.” We’ve had enough Catholic-spin on the homosexual drift within the Catholic Church. The Church is in the midst of a full-scale crisis and the first step in healing and defending her is an honest and forthright diagnosis. In a nutshell, the problem is the sexual revolution and sodomy among many inside the Church.

Tragically, the Family Synod modernists have set Catholic fatherhood backwards for our lifetime. It will be Catholic families, wives, children, and single young women who feel the brunt of men of all ages repulsed from the Church because of the sodomite smoke seeping from its midst.

Friday, October 24, 2014

Lieutenant Governer Anthony Brown, the Democratic candidate for governer, urged guests at NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland's (NPCM) 25th annual Evening of Chocolate gala that although "pro-choicers" have settled law on their side, the "status quo is not good enough."

Brown, who is Roman Catholic, arrived at the September 20 gala at 8:10p.m. and worked the room until 8:50, at which time he spoke for five minutes to the gathered crowd. He left directly after finishing his brief speech.

...

The evening's emcee followed the lieutenant governor with a very short list of NPCM's accomplishments over the past year. At the top of the list was the publishing of anti-crisis pregnancy center literature, critical of pregnancy centers for "telling lies" by not providing all of the options (that is, by advising clients to abort their babies), propaganda that no one outside of the evening's paltry gathering of chocolate martini drinkers believes.

The emcee then introduced the three Choice Advocate Award Winners: Maryland State Delegate James Hubbard, Maryland State Senator Jennie Forehand, and past board member Jeff Meer.

For complete article and more info: DEFEND LIFE September-October
Newsletter
http://www.defendlife.org/newsletters/2014/September-October-2014-Newsletter.pdf

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

O God, who are rich in mercy
and who willed that the Saint John Paul II
should preside as Pope over your universal Church,
grant, we pray, that instructed by his teaching,
we may open our hearts to the saving grace of Christ,
the sole Redeemer of mankind.
Who lives and reigns.

Prayer over offerings

Accept this sacrifice from your people,we pray, O Lord,
and make what is offered for your glory,
in honor of Saint John Paul II,
a means to our eternal salvation.
Through Christ our Lord.

Prayer after Communion

May the Sacraments we have received, O Lord our God,
stir up in us that fire of charity
with which Saint John Paul II burned ardently
as he have himself unceasingly for your Church.
Through Christ our Lord.

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Bishops and popes hand-pick their collaborators all the time. Many people do.

Many factors are involved in personalities and how they factor into choices.
Think back to professional personnel decisions you have made when forced to choose between competent and qualified individuals.

The pope deals with perceptions in his ministry. You and I may not have a problem with how Burke feeds into perceptions but perhaps the pope does.
I really find it hard to believe that Burke's orthodoxy is the issue.

There is also the issue of the media and how they present the news. Where in the article does it quote Burke actually saying "Pope Francis is demoting me"? Technically Burke never uses the word demoted in the transcript of the recorded interview, He uses the term "transfer".

"The difficulty — I know about all the reports, obviously. I’ve not received an official transfer yet. Obviously, these matters depend on official acts. I mean, I can be told that I’m going to be transferred to a new position but until I have a letter of transfer in my hand it’s difficult for me to speak about it. I’m not free to comment on why I think this may be going to happen."

And overlaid upon all this is the lack of objectivity that all of us experience when something affects us personally. Cardinal Burke, even with all his experience and spiritual maturity, has this aspect to face as well. All of us understand how difficult it can be to deal with transitions and the adjustments necessary to flourish in a new place and with responsibilities and people.

If someone is being treated unfairly in the Church it won't be the first time; the Lord asks us to use our crosses as He used His for our salvation and for His glory.

The reporter takes liberties with the headline to make it more sensational and generate more interest. The pope has his reasons and he's the boss. As with most things in life where we do not have all the facts, we must be content to wait and pray with patience that God's will be done.

God writes straight with crooked lines: look at your own life to see that is true.

Cardinal Burke is on the young side, by the way; young enough to be called back into service perhaps by the next pope.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

We have seen Catholic Church history unfold in a most dramatic way in a completely new forum since Vatican II when, for the first time, believers everywhere participated in the events of the extraordinary Synod as they unfolded through the medium of the internet, expressing and contributing to and developing the sensus fidelium, or sense of the faithful, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
We are the descendants and inheritors of the Church of Ephesus, where the people surrounded the fathers of the Council in prayer and protest, calling upon the Mother of God, the Theotokos, and demanding that the Fathers respond in concord with their sense of the faith and declare her divine motherhood, which in fact they did.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

" Some More Delicate Cases34. I consider it my duty to mention at this point, if very briefly, a pastoral case that the synod dealt with-insofar as it was able to do so-and which it also considered in one of the propositions. I am referring to certain situations, not infrequent today, affecting Christians who wish to continue their sacramental religious practice, but who are prevented from doing so by their personal condition, which is not in harmony with the commitments freely undertaken before God and the church. These are situations which seem particularly delicate and almost inextricable.Numerous interventions during the synod, expressing the general thought of the fathers, emphasized the coexistence and mutual influence of two equally important principles in relation to these cases. The first principle is that of compassion and mercy, whereby the church, as the continuer in history of Christ's presence and work, not wishing the death of the sinner but that the sinner should be converted and live,(197) and careful not to break the bruised reed or to quench the dimly burning wick,(198) ever seeks to offer, as far as possible, the path of return to God and of reconciliation with him. The other principle is that of truth and consistency, whereby the church does not agree to call good evil and evil good. Basing herself on these two complementary principles, the church can only invite her children who find themselves in these painful situations to approach the divine mercy by other ways, not however through the sacraments of penance and the eucharist until such time as they have attained the required dispositions.On this matter, which also deeply torments our pastoral hearts, it seemed my precise duty to say clear words in the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, as regards the case of the divorced and remarried,(199) and likewise the case of Christians living together in an irregular union.At the same time and together with the synod, I feel that it is my clear duty to urge the ecclesial communities and especially the bishops to provide all possible assistance to those priests who have fallen short of the grave commitments which they undertook at their ordination and who are living in irregular situations. None of these brothers of ours should feel abandoned by the church.For all those who are not at the present moment in the objective conditions required by the sacrament of penance, the church's manifestations of maternal kindness, the support of acts of piety apart from sacramental ones, a sincere effort to maintain contact with the Lord, attendance at Mass and the frequent repetition of acts of faith, hope, charity and sorrow made as perfectly as possible can prepare the way for full reconciliation at the hour that providence alone knows."From Saint John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia_en.html